Breakthroughs after a break, and right before bed
I don’t really mind that it happens this way. Having insights bubble up to the surface when I’m trying to sleep is well worth it. About half of the insights aren’t nearly as significant in the morning, but that leaves a considerable amount that are. And I always write them down because if I don’t, they keep popping up and down as if to say “don’t forget me, don’t forget me!” I gave in to this a long time ago and now keep pen and paper close by.
This time I had some insights around “simple pricing”. That’s a vague term, I know. Later I’ll choose a better phrase, and once I have screenshots to point to it’ll be easier to explain. However, it refers to the alternative of complex pricing. I designed the system to handle the advanced case first, where each combination of product options (size, color, texture, etc) can have its own price. The next logical step was figuring out how to do the simple case, where the product only has 1 price, regardless of the options that are selected. The general solution came to me a few nights ago and I’ve finally implemented it. Turns out to be a pretty good solution, and it’s even robust enough that it doesn’t leave the system in an unstable state when switching between complex and simple pricing.
So now the current system handles the extremes quite well. There is plenty of room to make the in-between painless, but I shouldn’t spend time on that until I get feedback on the current setup.